The present invention relates to a laser diode having one or a plurality of current confinement structures, and in particular, relates to a broad-area laser diode suitable for high output applications and a method of manufacturing the same.
As a compact and low-cost laser light source with high reliability and high output capability, a so-called broad-area laser diode including a waveguide with its width (i.e. stripe width) widened has been utilized in various fields such as displays, printing products, initialization devices of optical disks, fabricating materials, and medical applications. In a typical broad-area laser diode, a stripe width is at least 5 μm or above. In many cases, the stripe width is 10 μm or above, and several hundred μm as a maximum. As a technique related to the broad-area laser diode, there is known a technique, for example, described in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2003-60288.